VP of Go Solar Programs Solar United Neighbors Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Background, Description, Delivery and Learning Objective: Adoption of renewable energy will skyrocket in the coming decade. Strong public interest in renewable energy is mirrored by strong public interest in working in the industry.
This poster will describe a program that organizations and companies can use to address short-term and medium-term capacity constraints. It will describe how they can bring on people who are interested in getting into the renewable energy industry but don’t necessarily have industry-specific skills.
The first step is to Identify a repeatable need you can easily train around. Having a repeatable set of work that someone can learn in a relatively short period of time and then build on to contribute to other more complex work later allows you to confidently recruit and cycle through program participants without the uncertainty of what they will work on and for how long.
Second, it is important to keep it flexible and value the work. The program will be successful if it’s paid, flexible, part-time, and permits remote work. This allows people trying to enter the workforce, working in grad school, or in the midst of career transitions to participate in the program, while also balancing other work and education opportunities.
Lastly, practitioners need to focus on the onboarding and training experiences. The first few weeks of time during the Fellowship are critical moments to reassure the participants that they’ve made the right choice, and that the time they spend with the organization will be worthwhile. This means making the training experience clear, and easy to navigate, creating opportunities for social interaction with teammates and others in the organization, and making sure each Fellow knows that their opinions and contributions are valued.
This poster is perfect for growing organizations that have capacity challenges. It will provide them a path to meet their short-term needs while building a bench of potential long-term staffing support.
